That Old Black Magic
by Jessa L'Rynn
Summary: Dean, Sam, and the Angel try to take a vacation to Savannah, Georgia. Key word, as always with them, being "try".
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1: As Your Attorney, I Advise You to Order Golf Shoes**_

"What's in the box?" Dean asked.

Sam made a face, wondering why it was that his brother couldn't take anything less than Armageddon itself seriously. "Dean, that..." He couldn't even finish the sentence, couldn't even try. It was pretty damned obvious what was in the box, since there was a decapitated body lying next to it. "It's golf shoes," Sam snarked, considering the body's completely appropriate costume.

Castiel peered up from the gaudily covered feet of the deceased. "Why would there be golf shoes in the box?" he questioned. "Surely these, though lurid, were sufficient to this man's needs?"

Dean smiled slightly, ignoring the angel's usual obliviousness (as usual). "So, I'm assuming it's not his golf balls in there," Dean joked, then sighed, looking to the heavens as though they had personally offended him. (Technically they had, but Dean usually let it slide more or less.) "One weekend off, is that too much to ask?"

"Probably," Castiel answered, presumably on his absent Father's behalf, "the odds are not in your favor. Nevertheless, we do not have any known connection to this body. Neither are we required to dispose of it. We can go back to hitting things with sticks..."

"Two things," Dean said. "One, your ball is in this guy's left ear," (it had fallen in through the opening of the box), "and two..."

"Decapitation is usually us," Sam interrupted. "Vampire?"

"Too much sunlight," Dean pointed out the obvious. It wasn't that vampires couldn't go out in daylight, it was that it hurt like a bitch, and the brighter the day, the worse it was. Dean knew - he'd been one once.

"No self-respecting vampire would be caught dead in Ralph Lauren," Sam offered, poking at the red polo shirt and then the mismatched plaid trousers with his toe.

"Are there self-respecting vampires, anymore?" Dean wondered. "Stephanie Meyers is still walking around, you know." He shrugged, then grimly added, "Bitch is probably the Alpha's propaganda chick."

"I'll just call it in," Sam decided. "We are not meant for normal sports."

"You're the one who had a 'Groupon'," Dean complained, and he seemed to have acquired the ability to speak in air quotes from Cas. "I didn't even want to play golf."

"I was trying to figure out what your fascination with it was."

"My fascination?" Dean asked, and then he apparently remembered that Sam had found golf clubs at Lisa's house before Dean had moved out. "Dude, that was before Purgatory, and what was I supposed to do in the suburbs? You can't exactly get the guys together for machete practice before the back yard barbeque."

"People will talk," Castiel supplied, dry and helpful. Dean grinned like the angel had said the funniest thing. Sam had no idea whether Cas was joking or not.

Sam shook his head at the pair of them and slung his clubs over his shoulder as he reached for his phone. He was dialing while Dean and Cas continued going over the scene, the angel's attention and the hunter's picking up different, but hopefully useful, details. He introduced himself as Special Agent Sam Nash, here in Savannah on vacation, and explained what he'd found.

"Dude," Dean wondered as soon as Sam hung up, "what's the stroke penalty for moving your ball before it goes to the morgue?"

Sam rolled his eyes and felt a little like he'd been caught in an episode of CSI.

* * *

"I see dead people," the coroner complained.

Sam just shook his head. He often thought Dean was the only person he knew who spoke fluent pop culture references, but it was definitely becoming the thing to do today. A quick hand gesture to let Dean know where he was going, and Sam went to join the sheriff's deputy out from under the trees.

Castiel was actually writing down what the man said. Sam was pretty sure he'd never be able to read what the angel was scribbling in a notebook he'd produced from somewhere, but he hoped this way it would be easy to translate. "Dean's with the coroner," Sam explained as both the uniformed officer and the trench-coated angel looked up at his arrival. "Special Agent Sam Nash," he introduced himself, "we spoke on the phone."

"Rick Rogers. I was just telling you partner here..."

"We're not partners," Cas corrected.

Sam forced himself not to sigh, and shot Cas a quelling look, hoping he'd learned the silent 'shut up' at least from all his time with Dean. "We work in different offices," he lied. Then, just to make sure - he hoped - that Cas would catch on, he added, "Agent Stills here is Dean's partner, and Dean's my brother."

"Didn't plan on a working vacation, I bet," said Rogers, pulling off his hat to run a handkerchief over his balding pate.

"No, sir," Sam agreed. "Came for the parade, and I guess we'll be staying for the investigation."

A few moments, and a few urges to strangle Cas passed, while Sam handed the cop his supervisor's card - Kevin had gotten used to pretending to be FBI on the phone - and waited. "Your boss sounds like a ten year old," Rogers said as he hung up.

"He is not," Cas said. "He is a..."

"You know how it is," Sam interrupted urgently - the last thing they needed right now was the phrase 'Prophet of the Lord' in this conversation. "You work your ass off for years, and they hire the college kid off the street to tell you what to do."

Rogers grinned, and Sam grinned, and they were comrades after that. He decided the safest thing for their new camaraderie was less angels. "Cas, why don't you let Dean know what we've found out?"

The angel nodded, and toddled off, and Sam felt better already.

* * *

"You wanna look?" the coroner asked Cas, pulling out a drawer in the wall of them, while across the morgue, the body from the golf course got situated.

"I don't want any part of it," Cas replied warily, and Dean chuckled in the background. Sam went on with the actual work in this situation, ID'ing the body, finding out the next of kin, if there was any known explanation for the guy and his head to have parted company so abruptly. Dean and Cas could keep playing around all they wanted, but someone had to actually get some work done around here.

He lost track of time in the process of finding out that the dead guy was Joel "Smilie" Sanders, a local car dealing politician. It was at least long enough that he found out poor "Mr. Smilie" was beloved in his community, and that his head weighed 5.2 kilograms.

What interrupted Sam's fascination with the professional autopsy - he'd done more than his share of field autopsies, sadly, but he liked to watch the real work, sometimes, just to compare - was Rogers coming back with an expression of grim satisfaction. "Got a suspect," he said, showing Sam a file.

There was a picture of a large, burly, machete wielding landscaper, and he apparently worked at the golf course in question. For some reason, according to the file, the guy, Warren Harris, was convinced that Smilie Sanders, that pillar of the community, was responsible for the death of his young daughter. He'd tried to get the guy arrested, and was currently in the process of filing a wrongful death lawsuit. He looked good for it - real good. Maybe he'd been in the process of disposing of the body when Cas had sliced his ball into that wood.

Sam shook his head. He was with Dean on this - monsters made sense. People, not so much. He thanked Rogers and suggested the cop call if he needed anything. Then he went to tell the guys they were scott free to return to their vacation. He wasn't sure whether he was rescuing them from the coroner or the coroner from them.

"Awesome," said Dean, glancing at his cell phone. "Looks like we'll have time to catch dinner."

* * *

"The Pirates' House," Dean pronounced. They were in the parking lot of an old tavern turned restaurant, above Savannah's famous River Walk, less than a mile from the Savannah River itself. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must use caution."

"Really, Dean?" Sam demanded. "Really? Cas, we're just eating, not time traveling. He's losing it. Ignore him."

"I don't understand," Castiel admitted, but why would he? Dean was nuts.

"He's quoting, Cas," Sam said, grimly.

"This place used to be a pirates' tavern," Dean explained as they walked across the lot. "There are supposed to be secret passages where they'd shanghai the unlucky saps who got drunk here by mistake and haul them out to the ships on the river. Poor bastards would pass out in the bar and wake up in the middle of the Atlantic with some sonuvabitch screaming at them in Italian."

Cas tilted his head to the side. "Did it have to be Italian?" he wondered. "Could they not have been screamed at in English, or Portuguese?"

"Whatever language, pick one," Dean said, and otherwise was completely patient, which Sam had never understood. "The point was ending up press-ganged before Orlando Bloom made it cool."

They got through a good meal at a rather classy restaurant without Dean embarrassing them or Cas scaring the wait staff more than a little. Sam had a salad - a good one, all locally sourced and grown, - the kind he couldn't get in BigGerson's. Cas ordered the soup of the day - it seemed that tasting molecules didn't apply as much with soup. Dean, in response to a total lack of burgers on the menu, ordered a steak, lightly killed, and ate it while it screamed. (Not really, but did it have to be _that_ rare? Sam had been living with the man all his life, but sometimes he was convinced his brother was part wolverine.)

Dessert was easier. Sam wanted to say no, but you couldn't do that when there was Dean and pie in the same building, and he ordered the peach, so Sam decided to be a heathen and order the cheese cake. They couldn't resist buying Cas the angel food cake - well, they could've, but they didn't try too hard.

While they waited, Cas pulled a pile of brochures from a pocket of the trench coat he was still carrying but not wearing. He'd been admiring all of them this morning in the motel lobby while Dean and Sam got third rate coffee and second rate danishes. Motel 6 was really coming up in the world.

"Since we do not have to deal with Mr. Smilie," Cas said, "I think we should probably investigate this."

He handed Dean one of the fliers, dark and bleak with a huge, blood-lettered banner on the front, proclaiming it a sales brochure for a ghost tour. Sam groaned. "Cas," he started, "this is just..."

"I think he's right," Dean decided, something wicked and gleeful twinkling in his eye. Sam groaned again and contemplated braining himself on the table top. "C'mon, Sammy, it'll be fun," his brother promised.

Their dessert arrived then, with a waitress who looked more like one of those ageless Hollywood beauties than an actual human being. She astounded Sam by slipping him her number on a small cocktail napkin. He blinked at it, then looked at the woman with the dark, brilliant eyes, and folded the napkin to put in his pocket. His brother shot him an encouraging grin, a silent dare in that ridiculous expression of his, while the angel of the missing Lord just looked politely and absent-mindedly baffled. Before he could say something and confuse everyone, Sam changed the subject. "How's the angel food cake, Castiel?"

The angel blinked at the dessert in question, fresh glazed strawberries dripping down the sides of the slice, chocolate sauce drizzled artistically all over the plate. Whole, capped fruits and a generous dollop of whipped cream provided the finishing touch. "Angels do not require food," he reminded them. "Therefore, the name is suspect."

Dean leaned over and stole a strawberry, scooping up whipped cream and chocolate at the same time. He expected his brother to pop the whole thing rudely into that gaping maw of his, but Dean leaned over the angel, with a firm, "Try this." Castiel, looking a little baffled and a lot something Sam didn't want to actually think about, took the offering between humorously parted lips.

Sam tried not to roll his eyes or make a face at them, so he looked down at his cheesecake, and took a quick bite. "Oh my God," he groaned, astonished as the tantalizing flavors of vanilla and cream burst across his palate. It wasn't a cheesecake, it was a religious experience.

"You're such a girl," Dean pronounced, a soft smile on his face, and a forkful of cake in his hand.

Sam made a face at him. He couldn't actually help that, because he wasn't the one feeding an adult man in public while his own desert lay melting and neglected. He had just decided to go ahead and point it out when Cas took Dean's hand and guided the fork to his mouth.

Sam took a bite of Dean's pie and ice cream. It wasn't half bad. Cas made a noise like a dropped mouse, an astonished little squeak. "How is it?" Sam asked, amused at the angel's wide blue eyes, and considering going back for another bite off Dean's plate.

"My pie!" Dean complained and finally paid attention to his own dessert, snatching it out of Sam's reach.

"This makes me happy," Cas decided, and forked up another bite of the cake.

Dean smiled at him, and Cas smiled right back. They were so freaking gay.

* * *

The night had fallen, mild and fragrant with magnolia blossom, as the trio settled in for the ghost tour. They had sort of commandeered the back of an open air trolley, in the company of a gaggle of whispering tourists and one teenaged brat who appeared to have been dragged along by the lady in the lime green sports coat in the front of the bus.

Dean was trying to explain to Cas that the Savannah ghosts weren't real - not the way they understood real ghosts - but wasn't getting anywhere, because the more he talked, the louder the kid turned up the damn stereo system. Sam made a face at him. Seriously, this wasn't the friggin' 80s, so what the hell? The hunter stood up - to as much of his full height as he could manage in this overhyped mini-bus - and moved to sit next to the kid, in the name of intimidation. Besides, it would give him the room to stretch his legs down the aisle.

The kid didn't flinch. Castiel frowned at him, and even Dean glared. "I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said, in a rather impressively loud voice, "did you say 'Irving Hedges'?"

"No." Dean's voice, despite its commanding bravado, didn't carry nearly so well. Difference in their regular battlefields, perhaps? Sam was mildly curious. "I said..." Dean swore colorfully and then rounded on the rock fan. "Look, kid, I like rock music as much as the next guy, but you gotta keep your tunes to yourself."

"You never keep your music to yourself," Castiel pointed out. "Sam and I are repeatedly subjected to the same seven albums on an endless loop, with the assurance that the driver picks the music. When either of us drives, you still insist on your music selection on the grounds that the ownership of the car supersedes the need for shotgun to 'shut his cakehole'."

Dean gaped at the angel. Sam put a hand up over his mouth, because if he didn't he was sure he was going to giggle like a school girl. He had never - not ever - heard anyone put his brother in his place like that before.

"Not the point," Dean finally managed. "My car, my rules. And it's six."

"Six?" Castiel questioned.

"Six albums."

"I count seven, if you include the tape in the..."

"No," Dean said, and when Cas opened his mouth, Dean held up a finger and stopped him. "Not one more word." Now Sam was going to have to find this mysterious seventh tape. Dean turned to the teenager. "Excuse me."

The kid, who seemed to have it down to a science, ignored him. Dean trying to be polite was impressive in Sam's book, and he watched avidly to see what happened next.

"Excuse me, would you might stopping that noise?" Dean asked.

The kid apparently knew they couldn't pummel an underage douche, or something, because he turned the irritating little sound system up instead of down. Dean narrowed his eyes and, Sam noticed, fingered his gun. Where's a demon when you need one, Sam thought desperately.

"Excuse me, would you mind stopping that damned noise?!"

And the little bitch had the actual nerve to look Dean Winchester in his aggravated, demon-killing, angel-smiting, monster-fighting face, and flip him off. Sam knew hunters who wouldn't have had balls that big. He knew gods that wouldn't. He winced.

Cas stood up and, in a smooth, sharp gesture, poked the kid in the forehead with two fingers. As the boy sank bonelessly down in his seat, snoring loudly before he even settled, Cas found and pulled the plug on the little speakers, leaving the iPod to drain its batteries to itself in silence.

"What were you saying?" Cas asked Dean, but he did it around a round of applause from the rest of the bus.

Sam gaped at the pair of them. "Did that just happen?" he asked.

"What?" Dean wondered.

"Did you two seriously just do the scene from _Star Trek IV_?"

"Are you all right, Sammy?" Dean asked, and he reached over with one hand as if to feel Sam's forehead. Sam swatted at his brother's hand for a moment, a kid trying to avoid a motherly gesture in public.

It took him a moment to get over Dean's sudden evil little grin. While he tried to get un-grossed-out, the trolley passengers went right back to what they were doing as if nothing had happened at all. Sam got up and moved to the seat across the aisle from Dean this time.

"Did you guys have to do that, though, really?" Sam asked, staring at his brother and the angel as they leaned together to try and talk more quietly now.

"Do what, Sammy?" Dean demanded, thoroughly annoyed.

"Kirk and Spock," Sam insisted frantically. "That was just..."

"Which one are you?" Dean asked, smiling with as much innocence as he could possibly manage which, since Sam knew better, was actually an impossible number less than zero.

A white haired man who was probably in his late sixties came on board then and started to check in, cheerfully, with his passengers. He came to the back to check their tickets. "What's wrong with him?" the guy asked, gesturing at the teen.

"Dunno," Dean and Cas shrugged, and even Sam couldn't tell if they were acting, so he was sure no one else would be able to do.

"Just let him sleep," said the woman he'd come on with. "Honestly, I'm just glad he's quiet for once."

Dean shrugged again, and the old man shrugged back and made his way back to the front of the trolley without anyone explaining that the funny angel and the guy in too much plaid had shut the kid down. It was then that Sam Winchester finally realized that, despite actual suspects for decapitated golfers, there was still something supernatural going on in Savannah, Georgia, and that he might very well be the only one who could see it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: I Don't Feel the Sickness Yet, But It's In the Post**

"The paint color," the tour guide explained in a slow, deeply Southern drawl, "is called 'haint'. 'Bout the same color as your shirt, sir," he added, pointing out Dean's thrift shop special t-shirt. "It's said to repel ghosts. Anybody know why it was called haint?"

No one said anything, though Sam was mildly amused by Castiel fingering Dean's t-shirt as if inspecting it for supernatural properties. The driver continued blithely, contagious humor in his cheerful tone. "The word 'haint' is very common in the Low Country, used instead of 'ghost'. Almost everyone in the South paints their porch roofs, at least, this color," the man explained. "An' it's called haint, 'cuz it 'haint blue' and it 'haint green'."

Castiel frowned and Sam watched him open his mouth to make a comment. He wondered what the clueless angel would come up with this time. He was, however, doomed to never find out, because at that precise moment, his cell phone, the one with the number on his business card, began ringing, strangely eerie in the quiet, night lit streets.

"Nash speaking," he answered, as Dean eyed him warily, sitting on the edge of his seat. The tour guide was glaring at them, too, because they were supposed to turn the phones off.

Dean leaned forward and flipped his badge at the driver tour-guide, and that not only stopped the glare, it also stopped the bus, for which Sam was grateful while he listened to the alarming details over the phone. When he hung up, he looked at his brother and the angel quite apologetically - so much for getting a few beers and calling the lady from the Pirates' House - and sighed. "New body," he murmured. "Washington Square."

He stood up and the other two followed him. Leaning over the driver, Sam apologized, explaining that they were Special Agents with a murder to go look into. He was really very sorry - the ghost stories were honestly much more fun.

"I have this crazy idea you're more interested in the murder case than me," the driver complained, though he was obviously joking.

"You're right," Dean answered in his most charming tone, "that is crazy."

Sam was still shaking his head as they walked out into the probably very haunted night.

* * *

"So I see it wasn't Arnold Palmer this time," said Dean, and it seemed to be his turn to go over the body and the crime scene with Rogers. Sam seemed to be stuck with angel sitting. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

"Why would Dean's shirt repel ghosts?" Cas asked Sam, earnest as always.

Sam tried not to sigh as he walked away from the body, wondering if he could convince Dean to take Cas and get him an ice cream or something, so that Sam could do some actual work. Why did the angel have to go from ancient to five and back again so often?

Sam was still thinking of this when Castiel pointed out something at the base of one of the benches on the corner of the square. The hunter decided to take back at least half of the bad things he'd thought about the trench-coated trouble and waved the nearest uniformed officer over.

Between the shell and cement side and the wooden seat of the bench, there was a small bag full of something that looked a lot like sugar. Sam didn't have to have real law enforcement training to know what it was, though. He'd been to college, and his bachelor's degree had come with a lot of free information about things that shouldn't come in plastic baggies. "Meth," he guessed, and the cop gave a grim nod before waving over the guy with the numbers and the camera.

"Good job, Cas," Sam said.

Cas frowned. "The bag contains a particularly vile poison," the angel said. "It may not be instantly fatal, but the debilitating, potentially hallucinogenic effects would likely guarantee that the victim would be too disoriented to seek help of any kind. Granted, it is not the cause of death in this instance, but the murderer could have intended to administer the poison..."

"What poison?" Dean asked, coming up beside them while stripping off a pair of blue gloves covered in something disgusting.

"Meth," Sam explained. "Cas found it on that bench over there."

"Oh," Dean said, and scratched idly at his cheek. "Yeah, he coulda been pulling a Walter White, he works at a high school in the next town."

"He's a guidance counselor, though," put in Deputy Rogers, who had just appeared at Dean's elbow. "We need to check around for the head." He gestured at the trash receptacle, several yards down the side walk. "You wanna give us a hand?"

"Do I have to?" Dean wondered, and gave Sam and Cas a thoroughly disgusted look as Rogers wandered away, chuckling.

"He's gonna laugh at you," Sam said, quite accurately. "They're all gonna laugh at you."

Dean shot Sam one of his rare bitch faces and dragged Cas with him as they went to search the trashcans.

It was only after Sam found the head - which had very probably been used for a three-point shot, given the length and sparsity of the blood trail leading up to the trashcan it occupied - that he realized he had been movie quoting, too. What in the name of all that was fallen and unholy was going on around here?

* * *

When they got to the morgue, they found the meth dealer - and his severed head - in the drawer next to the golfer from the morning. He'd been found earlier, but there'd been a screw up with jurisdiction and the Sheriff's Department hadn't found out about the body until it had turned up in the morgue. There, the Chief Coroner connected it to the rest of her collection of decapitated corpses and kept it close to hand for them when they arrived.

That was the story Sam got, while he was waiting for the prelim on the school counselor. Dean and Cas were comparing notes with Rogers over that body, and Sam was currently trying to compare the blade marks on the two bodies nearest to his hand. At his best guess, he was dealing with the same weapon. "Whatever it was, though, it was extremely sharp," Sam pronounced.

The Chief Coroner nodded, lifting a box of pale blue gloves and offering it to Sam. The size was right, so he slipped some on, then watched in amused disgust as the incredibly tall woman prodded the severed neck with a set of fine forceps. "It went through like butter, and there's no trace of the weapon, which is odd for striking bone. The guy's good - Special Forces or paramilitary at least." She gave Sam a cheery shrug, warm eyed and sensual.

"Could be Med School," Sam offered, teasing. He wasn't entirely sure he could help himself. How often did he run into a woman whom he didn't immediately dwarf? The Chief Coroner was over six foot tall, and Sam thought he would call her pretty out from under all that lab wear. "Wouldn't a doctor know exactly how to sever a spinal cord between the C3 and C4 vertebrae? Never have to strike bone?"

If she was surprised by Sam's knowledge, she showed no sign of it, just gave him a twinkle-eyed look through her goggles. "Well, usually, but not this kind of decapitation. There's no hesitation marks, just one straight, smooth cut. A doctor would need sedation to get the cut this perfect, and I haven't gotten anything from Tox that we weren't expecting. Besides, I'd use several smaller cuts - more efficient." She removed her face shield with a wry little smile. "Maybe a secret agent," she suggested. "All those tools..." Her voice dropped, naughty and suggestive. "And handcuffs."

"I guess I need to let them know what we're dealing with," Sam said, reluctantly. Then, channeling his inner Dean, he flirted, "Unless you'd like to confess and move on to the handcuffs?" Something about the doctor's wicked twinkle appealed to the part of Sam that had been so attracted to Bela, maybe even Ruby (though she'd been trying on that demon with a heart of gold thing, while Bela was unrepentantly bad). And he'd been off his game for awhile, so maybe it was time to get back in the saddle. Mixed metaphors notwithstanding, Sam decided to smile with the Devil's own appeal (he had it, after all, a residue of his long ago possession) and give back as good as he got.

She laughed a merry wicked bell tone, charming enough that Dean and Cas's heads both shot up. "Why don't you confess?" she teased, slipping her gloves off with studied deliberation. "I bet I'm handier with the handcuffs."

Sam gulped theatrically, then laughed. "Well, as long as you're not suggesting bone saws."

The coroner thumped him on his shoulder, flirtatious and lingering. She gave a soft, coy laugh. "Don't blow smoke up my ass - you'll ruin my autopsy."

Sam was enthralled. "What time do you get off?" he asked.

"I've been off the clock for two hours now," she practically purred. "As for getting off..." She smirked and Sam fought hard not to blush while she looked him over like a treat. "Hmm, your place or mine?"

Dean, Cas, and Rogers were still chattering over the bodies when Sam turned around, flashing Dean an instantly understood look. "Night, guys."

As he followed the doctor out of the morgue, he heard Dean announce, "Sammy's gonna get laid. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

He probably should mention his brother was a dick.

* * *

Sam whistled as he walked into the diner where Dean and Cas were occupying the hell out of a corner booth. They were having one of their epic staring contests, sprawled out on opposite benches, long limbs tangled under the too small table. Sam pulled a chair up to the end of the booth, and Dean finally broke away from Cas long enough to grin at his brother.

"Why didn't you invite her to join us, Sammy?" Dean asked.

Sam grinned right back. "She had to head into the office." The saucy middle-aged waitress swung by the table and asked Sam if he wanted anything. "I already ate," he said smoothly.

Cas looked gloomily into his coffee mug as if it was deliberately obscuring the secrets of the universe, while Dean grinned and winked. Sam tried to fight off a blush - he could stare down Lucifer, for pity's sake, but couldn't take a little casual ribbing from his big brother? "Why is this my life?" Sam murmured.

Cas opened his mouth to say something, probably something accidentally hilarious, but it was apparently becoming a standard here that Cas did not get to finish his sentences. Sam's phone rang and he answered the call from Rogers with a polite hello.

Rogers wanted to know if any or all of them wanted to help out canvassing the school where the dead teacher worked. Sam, hoping he might get to the bottom of the movie quoting if he followed the trail of bodies (how they matched up, he had no idea, but decapitation, so yeah), agreed, and Dean and Cas shrugged, so Sam volunteered them, too.

Dean flung the check and a couple of bills at him, then retreated to the bathroom, while Cas collected three to-go cups of coffee and headed out to the Impala. Sam realized Cas must have taken a liking to strawberries, because the strawberry pancakes weren't Dean's, not with the pork platter of nearly Python-sketch proportions listed. (Pig, pig, pig, eggs, and pig...)

The commotion at the table nearest the cash register began with a woman who was impersonating Dean with a pie. Sam almost regretted not having his brother present (because wouldn't it be nice to have someone else demonstrate behavior inappropriate for the public), except that she went from Dean-with-pie to Dean-with-Busty-Asian-Beauties far too quickly. Before he even had time to roll his eyes, he and the rest of the patrons present were treated to the famous scene from "When Harry Met Sally", complete with the woman at the next table ordering "what she's having."

Paying the bill, Sam left an excellent tip because no one should have to put up with Dean's breakfast habits without adequate compensation, and of course because it wasn't his money. As Dean rejoined him, oblivious to the chaos that had just played out here, Sam decided that he had reason to suspect that the quoting thing might honestly be following specifically him.

That theory was almost immediately dashed. "What is a whoopsie?" Castiel demanded of the brothers as they joined him at the Impala.

"A... what?" asked Dean.

"A whoopsie?" Cas questioned, now. "Perhaps it was whoopie?"

Sam frowned while Dean just gave Cas that look of "my best friend is an alien" he always reserved for Cas's completely weird moments. "What exactly was said?" Sam asked, in the tone of voice he usually saved for questioning weeping witnesses.

"A pair of gentlemen just walked past me, but one of them stopped while I was trying to hold the drinks and the keys..."

"What'd he say?" Dean interrupted, and Sam couldn't decide if he was being impatient or angry on the angel's behalf. Probably both - this was Dean, and Dean was the only person in the universe who thought Dean's head was simple.

"'It's all right, Captain. We always knew you were a whoopsie.'"

"Was it an angel?" Sam demanded, because who the hell else would be calling Cas "Captain".

"That's from _Stardust_," Dean exclaimed, a look of amusement and shock on his face.

"Stardust?" Cas questioned, looking quite interested.

Sam blinked, and really couldn't have resisted if he tried. "Isn't that a _chick flick_?"

Dean rolled his eyes and took his keys and a cup of coffee from the angel. "It's Gaiman, Sammy. Gaiman gets a pass because of Pratchett, if nothing else."

Sam had to allow that point, even as he lost the race for shotgun with the dark-haired, cheating weasel angel. He wasn't supposed to be able to move that fast without wings, for pity's sake. "I like their Crowley better than ours," Sam decided as he maneuvered gingerly into the space that wasn't particularly designed to hold his full-grown body.

Sam didn't even have to see Castiel's face to know he was doing his best impression of utter cluelessness. The angel seemed to consider saying something, but apparently decided he didn't actually want to know, after all. And why would he - according to Dean, Cas had promised to cut Crowley's heart out last time they met.

Dean decided to pop in a Creedence cassette he'd found only God Himself knew where. Sam decided idly that he ought to switch all of them out for Queen, thinking of annoying fictional demons. He sprawled out across the back seat and listened to his brother and - before too much longer - the angel singing about the Moon.

* * *

The first thing Sam learned was that High School had in no way improved since his graduation, or even since his last visit to one. The halls still smelled like despair and gym socks, abruptly punctuated by cleaning products. The classrooms were still over-crowded, the students still by-and-large jaded well before their time.

There were metal detectors at the doors, now. Sam and Dean set them off, but so did the entire troop of deputies with them, so no one thought anything particularly off about it. Cas, Sam was amused to note, didn't seem to set off the metal detector - in fact, if Sam had to guess, he'd say the thing didn't even know the angel was there.

The second thing he learned was that children could quote more obscure movie lines than his brother and IMDb put together. Over the course of an hour, he'd heard everything from early Disney to a rather charming chorus of "Hard Knock Life" from Annie, complete with choreography.

That was an interesting thing, too. Music started appearing. At first it was just casual humming, but the chorus from Annie was definitely new. For one thing, it gave the quoters the whole scope of Broadway plays that had been filmed... the first person to quote "High School Musical" at him was going to be shot. For another, it didn't seem to be limited to things Sam definitely recognized as movie quotes. He was only sure about that because there were things said that made absolutely no sense in context, rather like the stranger randomly quoting Stardust at Castiel.

"Whatever this is," Sam explained quietly to Dean, "it appears to be escalating."

"What does?" Dean wondered.

Sam gave his older brother a look. "The movie thing?" he pointed out.

"Eh," Dean said and, making a flippant gesture of utter unconcern, moved to join Cas, who seemed to be waving one or both of them over. Sam hoped he and Cas ended up singing a duet of 'I'll Cover You'. _That_ would be worth the price of admission, right there.

A kid tugged on Sam's sleeve, and the "agent" looked down to find an unexpectedly young girl staring up at him. What she was doing here in High School was beyond him, but he leaned down to listen, and sort of wished he had Dean's knack with kids.

"Everyone's asking about Mr. Chrismon," the girl murmured, and it wasn't a question.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, carefully. "He's..."

"I know," the little girl said. Then, abruptly, her expression turned fierce. "He deserved it," she spat, and it was horrible to see that kind of rage in such a small child.

Sam blinked. "Is that right?" he said, hoping the get her started, preferably before whomever was supposed to be minding her caught up to them. "Why do you think that was?"

"Zuli died, and it was Mr. Chrismon's fault. Sarah Beth said so, and Josh said that was true, but Mom didn't believe..."

"Ann Marie Davis, you come here right this instant!"

That was quick. The little girl flinched and looked pleading at Sam, before turning toward the harried looking adult who'd shouted. "I'm being 'questioned'," the kid said. "Like Sarah Beth."

Sarah Beth was, apparently, talking to Dean and Cas, because the girl with them flinched at the mention of the name. Sam watched as her distress communicated itself to the two of them, and thanked Cas's deadbeat Dad that Dean was there to keep Cas from interpreting it as a confession or something.

The adult came over to Sam and the little girl, and Sam forced a careful smile, knowing just from the look in her eyes that he was dealing with a momma bear faced with a threatened cub. "It's okay," he said to Ann Marie, "when I was your age, I wanted to do everything my big brother did, too, even when he got in trouble with our dad."

The little girl nodded. "I didn't mean to listen," she said, and Sam knew that tone from personal experience. "But I wanted to come play, and they were talking about Zuli and..."

The mother sighed and gently carded her fingers through her daughter's hair. "This is gonna be years of therapy," she murmured, eyes on Sam. "Ann Marie, Sarah Beth and her friends don't really know how Zulieka died, sweetheart. They're scared, and they're hurt, and they lashed out."

"They didn't do anything to him," Ann Marie snapped viciously, pulling away from her mother. "He did bad things to everyone. He once told Sarah Beth she wasn't good enough for Biggerson's."

The mother's face became a matching mask of fury. Sam, knowing full well that there was about to be massive family drama, and convinced that they were not going to find anything useful in the drama, gracefully bowed out. "We're sure Sarah Beth and her friends had nothing to do with it, Ann Marie. I think you and your mom and your sister need to have some time together. Are you gonna be okay?" He added that last because it was something Dean would do, always concerned for kids, always knowing the right thing to say.

Ann Marie nodded slowly, and the mother collected her and the older girl that Dean and Cas had talked to for only a moment. Sam shook his head and looked for a teacher to talk to about Zulieka.

* * *

Sam and Rogers decided on questioning the other guidance counselors since, as Crismon's closest colleagues, they likely knew more about him, even if they didn't know it.

Meanwhile, there were two deputies arguing with the principal over the locked filing cabinet in the guidance office, and Dean and Cas searching Chrismon's over-indulgent cubby hole of an office. How something that small could contain that much tat was anyone's guess, but Sam just shook his head and let it go.

"So you worked with Mr. Chrismon for ten years?" Rogers asked the brunette with the ridiculously gorgeous legs and the incredibly plain face. Some people just didn't get a fair shake.

Sam watched her answer, more than listening, because he wanted to see what she thought, not what she said. He might not be psychic (anymore) but it was still pretty easy for him to read most people. Another man crowded into the small suite of offices was hovering just out of theoretical earshot, and Sam watched him, too, wondering if he was a co-worker or maybe the lawyer for the school board. He was dressed a bit too nicely for school, Sam thought.

Rogers rounded on the guy. "Who're you?" he asked. The guy looked around the room and ignored them. Rogers shoved up his sleeves and straightened his hat. "As God is my witness," he muttered, "you will learn to speak." And he trotted off to question their eavesdropper just because he could.

Sam got three stories about how helpful but realistic Mr. Chrismon was, but he doubted the first one, the chick with the killer legs, actually believed what she was saying. He stuck his head into the office to let Dean and Cas in on this news, but what he found rather startled him.

They had apparently located the guy's stash, because they had all kinds of bottles and baggies stacked up neatly, and the desk in pieces. "There's something under here," Dean was muttering, from where he was bent over the desk at such a ridiculous angle that Sam couldn't comment because it was just too easy.

He tugged on something - which weirdly turned out to be a bunch of fake flowers - and shrugged, then tossed it to Cas. "Think fast," he said and the angel caught it deftly, before kneeling down across from Dean as if to see where the flowers had appeared from. Still too easy.

"What should I do with these?" Cas asked.

Dean shrugged. "I dunno, angel," he grumbled, oblivious to their audience as he tried to slot his pocket knife into the same space he'd just found the flowers. "Check the card, see who they're from."

"Isn't it romantic," Rogers joked dryly from the doorway.

Since it looked a bit like Dean had given Cas the bundle of flowers he'd tossed, maybe. Sam forced himself not to snicker at Dean turned toward them with a flat expression, the closest thing he ever got to a proper bitch face. It was too easy, really, as Cas looked over the flowers in a quest for an identity.

"Ah hah," Dean snapped, triumphantly, twisted his arm, and produced a sudden flood of papers from the half-dismantled desk. "I told you he had to have this somewhere."

"But what is it?" Cas asked, still prodding at the flowers.

Dean gave him that patient, strange look he only ever wore when he was with Cas. This particular one was the one he used when repeating himself for the twenty seventh time about something Cas should have got the first time. "Your Father hates me, doesn't He?" Dean asked blandly.

The question, seeming apropos of nothing, actually startled the angel, judging from the measurable expression on his normally quite straight face. "I've never given it any thought," Cas admitted. "I tend to think not, however. According to Joshua, He hasn't really noticed anything besides you and Sam in a long time."

"Go us," muttered Sam and then, interrupting before it could get all philosophical, questioned, "What is all this crap, Dean?"

"Well, it ain't prescription, that's for sure," Dean said, and Sam chuckled ruefully while Cas inspected the nearest bottle for some indication as to its contents.

Dean joined Cas, so Sam looked down to see what Rogers was doing. The deputy gave a mischievous smirk up at Sam. Sam blinked, realizing rather abruptly that Rogers sort of reminded him of someone, though he had no idea who, possibly someone he knew from Stanford.

"You'll never guess who that guy is," Rogers murmured, effectively derailing Sam's train of thought before he could place what about the deputy was familiar. Sam made an interested face to cover his wariness and desperate prayer that the fancy suit was not from the real FBI. "He's the widow's lawyer," Rogers explained, and he sounded very southern and very, very scandalized, Sam thought.


End file.
